More People Want to Watch the Coolest Sci-Fi Movie on Netflix

You should watch The Platform, a 2019 Spanish science fiction horror movie in progress Netflix. I watched it, and it’s great. But I will add that I won’t be watching it again. Ever.

It is one of the most disturbing films I have seen in my entire life. After watching it, I thought about the film and its complex meaning for days. The Terrace is so horrible and so incomprehensible that I am happy to let the memory of it fade away in my mind. I’m glad it’s there, but I don’t need to sit down and see it again. Here’s why.

The Platform takes place in a futuristic prison – a vertical tower, with an open hole in the middle of each cell. A platform stacked with food descends through the cells to feed the prisoners. This is the genius and horror of this film.

The platform starts out loaded with desserts of all kinds created by a chef. But he only stops briefly at each cell floor, where the two prisoners on that level have very limited time to get whatever they can. And they can’t shovel the food into their cell to eat later because they’ll be killed if they try to hoard anything.

So the prisoners on the upper level get untouched food, and as the platform descends, it turns into a mess of half-chewed scraps and garbage. The high level prisoners don’t care about the food left when he leaves them, so they don’t bother to keep the Platform healthy, if you know what I mean and think you are.

Prisoners are randomly assigned to a different level in the prison, and their level changes every month. If you are near the top, you have a good chance of getting grub that is not quite enough. If you’re at the bottom, you’re basically eating saturated, which is left untouched — if anything edible is left at all.

The Platform metaphor is obvious.

“There are three types of people,” intones a character. “Those at the top, those at the bottom, and those that fall.”

Some people, often through sheer luck or chance, are at the top of the heap, eating the best things and living a relatively easy life. I think of those silver spoon babies who are said to have been “born on the third coin, and I think they hit triple.”

Others end up at the bottom of society and, without winning the lottery, are likely to die before moving up. They will often do almost anything to get ahead.

And there is another group – those who start out doing well, eating well, who are placed on a high level where food is abundant and unsullied. But then they fall to a lower level, where the cakes and steaks they once liked are just a dream. (Of course, some move higher. But in The Platform, if you’re not at the top, you’re under too much pressure.)

It might sound simplistic. You should take advantage of the opportunities to raise yourself, to educate yourself, to feed yourself better. Yes, in The Platform, none of that applies. You were born — or placed — where you are. A random draw determines if you go up or down, and how far in either direction. It’s not fair, but when you’re at the top, you take what you want without thinking about those who are doing worse.

As one character points out, if everyone in the prison only ate what they needed from the Terrace, he would make his way down with enough food to feed everyone. But greed and fear and the gnawing memory of hunger mean that is unlikely to happen.

You might think that’s enough of a plot in itself. But the Platform is packed with endless surprises, and I won’t give most of them away. These are just some of them, and they are not real advocates because they take strange forms that you can’t imagine even reading them here:

• A bloody woman who descends on the platform, looking for her daughter, realizes that on every level she descends there are two prisoners who are as likely to try to kill her.
• Each prisoner is allowed to bring one thing into the prison with them, and some of those things are odd. (The protagonist chooses a copy of Don Quixote.) Like Chekov’s gun, they never matter.
• Prisoners believe there are 200 levels. Emphasis on “believe.”
• We don’t know as much about the prisoners, the prison or anything in this film as we think.

Now, I’m a Gen Xer, raised in the era of slasher movies. I have seen disturbing movies. I watched Audition, Clockwork Orange and even Human Centipede. (So ​​am I, sorry about that last one.)

But the Platform is different. Her social commentary may seem obvious: Be kind to those below you, because you never know when you’ll find yourself at the bottom. But director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and screenwriters David Desola and Pedro Rivero take a seemingly simple concept and deliver it in earth-shaking fashion.

I never want to watch The Platform again, ever. But often, I think about it. The plot is still swirling around my mind, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be free.